Things are looking pretty rosy in adtech right now.
Criteo’s stock surged yesterday following its Q4 earnings report. While revenue dipped slightly—down 2% from $566 million in Q4 2023 to $553 million in Q4 2024—the overall numbers and market reaction were overwhelmingly positive. Criteo’s long-term bet on retail media appears to be paying off in a big way, and investors seem to be rewarding the transition from a display company.
Just look at the company’s Q4 earnings presentation, which proudly states, “We Have Brought Our Commerce Media Vision to Life,” a sentiment captured in its performance. Criteo now works with 225 retailers, including 65% of the top 30 U.S. retailers and 50% of the top 30 in EMEA, while running retail media campaigns for 3,500 brands. In total, the company saw $532 million in retail media ad spend—up 26% year-over-year.
Other interesting nuggets:
- AI was a big focus. Criteo mentioned AI nine times in prepared remarks—up from seven in the last earnings call—and it felt even more prominent this time. For example, the company highlighted the Criteo AI Lab, which wasn’t mentioned previously (and is really cool). AI also made it into this quarter’s press release, whereas it was absent last time.
- This was Megan Clarken’s final earnings call as she officially retires, with Michael Komasinski stepping in as the new CEO. Clarken reflected on the transition: “I’m confident that he’s the right leader to take the reins and continue to execute against Criteo’s vision and the exciting journey ahead.”
Why This Matters:
Retail media is one of the fastest-growing sectors in digital advertising. According to data from Coresight, retail media is projected to grow over 15% in 2025, reaching $179.5 billion. Beyond traditional retail media, we’re also seeing the rise of commerce media, as non-retail businesses and brands tap into the opportunity to monetize their audiences and first-party data.
Criteo is positioning itself as the go-to player in this space as it explodes. As the company put it in its earnings presentation: “We have built the only unified, AI-driven platform that directly connects advertisers with retailers and publishers to drive commerce on retailers’ sites and the open internet.”
Experts React:
Karsten Weide of W Media Research has a great recap of the earnings here, including some charts comparing Criteo to The Trade Desk. According to Weide, “However, when benchmarked against competitors like The Trade Desk or overall programmatic advertising, Criteo’s net revenue growth still falls short.”
Our Take:
The Amazon announcement at CES, where Amazon unveiled new tools to help retailers build commerce media businesses, was seen as a potential headwind, but Criteo addressed it well on the call. Here’s Clarken’s perspective:
“On Amazon—this is a… I think they have three clients that are—it’s a very small client base on the end-to-end service. It is a very long-tail play, way long today.
It doesn’t focus on our client base and Retail Media. In Retail Media, we are more at the top tier, the 225 clients that we have are focused on very specific things. For the most part, what we hear from our clients is (a) relevance gap in partnering with Amazon to provide the service because they compete against Amazon, and (b) there is a notion that if there’s another offer available, it certainly adds value to spread service around—so as not to have all their eggs in one basket. This is something that our clients—not just on the retail side, but also on the brand side—are aware of.
So, this one is… all of these things are always worth looking out for, but it really does touch a different part of the market than where we operate. We’re going to continue to do what we do at the higher end of the market base that we have.”
She has a point, especially the “compete against Amazon” piece.
